LEGOLAND California 2024

My youngest just turned 10! I’ve officially got three kids in double digits! B hasn’t ever had a big party or destination birthday so this year we made it a priority and scheduled a trip to LEGOLAND California!

Ticket prices have changed since the last time we visited. The least expensive option was to purchase polybag LEGO sets on clearance at Walmart with “kids go free” coupons on the back of the packages. I assumed we would need one coupon per child and sent my husband on a last minute errand to find some at Walmart. As it turns out, only one coupon was necessary to purchase the tickets we needed online.

Upon looking it up online, I discovered that the “kids go free” promotion was only for 1-day park hopper passes. These tickets include access to LEGOLAND and either the aquarium or the water park. We had intended to only visit one park, LEGOLAND, but the cheaper park hopper ticket included access to the aquarium as well. For our family of five, we ended up getting four 1-day park-hopper tickets to LEGOLAND and the aquarium for $75 each and one extra ticket for full price $140. This was a better price than 5 full price regular one-day tickets to LEGOLAND without the aquarium access at $130 each.

So off we drove to Carlsbad, CA! It was a full day’s drive for us including stops and my husband and I took turns at the wheel. We stayed at a super fancy hotel, The Sheridan, which has a private LEGOLAND entrance within a short walk from the hotel. We brought along cereal for breakfast to save some money on eating out when we could.

LEGOLAND opened at 10 am so before the theme park, we made a quick visit to the beach to eat muffins for breakfast and watch the surfers and the pelicans.

We arrived at the private entrance gate at about 10 minutes before 10 am. The weather was perfect and although the park was a bit more crowded than I’d like, we never waited for more than about 30 minutes for a ride. We stayed in the park until closing at 6 pm, then did a super quick tour of the aquarium for about 25 minutes before high-tailing it at top speed (a light jog for me) across the entire park to make it back to the private entrance before it closed at 6:30 pm. Arriving there out of breath and panting, the kindly employee informed us that next time we can just ask for a shuttle! 😂

Here’s all the fun stuff we fit into just one day!

• Deep Sea Adventure x 2 in a row
• Driving School (ages 6-13, our oldest was too old 😢)

• Kid’s Power Tower
• Technic Coaster – bought the souvenir photo of the kiddos
• BIONICLE Blaster (dad sat this one out – it’s a spinning ride like the teacups at Disneyland)

• Build custom minifigs and get a souvenir magnet
• Water and strawberries snack
• Emmet’s Flying Adventure (mom had to close her eyes on this one to avoid being sick)
• Everything is Ramen for lunch
• Carousel
• Sky Patrol
• Miniland USA
• Coast Cruise
• Technic Coaster (2nd time)

• Granny’s Apple Fries snack

• The Hideaways Playground
• Emmet’s Flying Adventure (mom sat this one out – it’s a 360° screen ride that moves only a small amount, but the visual cues make it feel like flying all crazy!)
• Explorer River Quest

• Sea Life Aquarium

We stayed at the park from gates opening at 10 am to gates closing at 6:30 pm. It was a wonderful way to commemorate our youngest child turning 10-year-old! The kiddos are all just young enough to really enjoy LEGOLAND to its fullest!

Afterwards, we ate fish and chips at a restaurant right on the beach and caught the sunset over the Pacific Ocean before driving home the next day.